Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee strongly condemns the blasts which took place in Dilsukh Nagar area of Hyderabad .It is an inhuman act and it should be seen as crime against humanity. This committee expresses its grief and conveys its solidarity with families of victims of these blasts. It is a matter of deep concern that state administration and its agencies completely failed to maintain law and order situation and to curb the anti social element who are involved in this blasts strike from time to time.

This Committee demands Govt. to investigate bomb blasts cases in fair manner by keeping in view all the angels so that real criminals should be brought to justice.

This Committee strongly believes that present political situation in Andhra Pradesh is so worst that any thing worst would have been expected. Whenever a political turmoil occur in congress party this kind of gruesome incidents do get crop up.

One thing can be said clearly that due to this blasts mind of general public is being diverted from the real important issues. Separate Telangana movement which was going to be started from 24th February by “Sadak bund” has suffered a big setback.

CLMC urged media to be sensitive in reporting the blasts, halt their self investigation and stop targeting particular community in their media room trail. CLMC strongly condemn irresponsible reporting of media quoting unnamed Intelligence sources’ jumping to conclusions. CLMC believe that this kind of reporting is also an act of terror which is aimed to targeting Muslim community.

Captive Democracy- Abuse of criminal system to curb dissent against the POSCO steel plant in Odisha

DOWNLOADA Fact-finding team was formed in December 2012 to look into the abuse of the criminal system and filing false cases to curb dissent against the POSCO steel plant in Orissa. The Team’s observations and analysis are presented in their report- “Captive Democracy” which is to be released by Member of Parliament and CPI National Secretary Shri. D. Raja, Senior Lawyer of Supreme Court and Social Activist Adv. Prashant Bhushan and Senior Academician Institute of Chinese Studies and the Council for Social Development, New Delhi Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty. You are invited for the release of the report “Captive Democracy- the abuse of the criminal system to curb dissent against the POSCO steel plant in Orissa” and a short video presentation on the ‘Ongoing Police violence at POSCO affected villages’ presiding the release. The struggle in Dhinkia and nearby villages against the POSCO project continues despite all attempts of the State Government to muzzle this courageous dissent. One of the weapons used by the State Government has been foisting hundreds of criminal cases against activists and villagers resisting the project and arbitrary arrests and jailing of them. The Government of Orissa has started the process of forcible land acquisition from Govindpur village, which is being resisted by villagers and member of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi (PPSS). The Police are attempting to break this struggle by the filing of false cases and arresting persons resisting the project. In the last one month around 6 activists of the PPSS have been arrested and are presently in prison. Representatives from Delhi Forum, New Delhi and Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore had gone on a Fact Finding visit to the POSCO affected Dhinkia Panchayat consisting of the villages of Dhinkia, Govindpur and Paatna between 22 and 24 December 2012 to collect first-hand information in regard to the abuse of the criminal system to implicate villagers as well as to figure out the areas of support needed. It was found that villagers have been unable to leave their villages for almost 6 to 8 years in fear that they would be arrested, and have been unable to approach the court for legal remedies due to financial constraints.

Shamima Kausar along with other relatives collect the body of her daughter Ishrat Jahan from Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. CBI arrested IPS officer GL Singhal in connection with the fake encounter case. AFP/Sam Panthaky/Files

“Authorities in India’s Gujarat state are subverting justice, protecting perpetrators, and intimidating those promoting accountability 10 years after the anti-Muslim riots that killed nearly 2,000 people. The state government has resisted Supreme Court orders to prosecute those responsible for the carnage and has failed to provide most survivors with compensation. Instead of prosecuting senior state and police officials implicated in the atrocities, the Gujarat authorities have engaged in denial and obstruction of justice”

11 years after the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat state of Western India in February 2002, controversial Chief Minister of Gujarat from the Bhartiya Janata Party, Narendra Modi is being mooted by some sections as BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 General Elections in India. Implicated in several reports, Modi continues to shun responsibility and gloss over the carnage of 2002 with claims of Gujarat’s development, protecting perpetrators with impunity. Join the panelists as they discuss issues of state culpability, the divisive communal politics of the Hindu-right and the Hindu-right’s continual attempts to obscure their agenda of violent injustice.

New Delhi: The NHRC on Wednesday sought a report from the Bihar government over the denial of water to Dalits by upper caste people in Kishanganj.

“A notice has been issued to the chief secretary of Bihar and the district magistrate of Kishanganj,” National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said in a statement.

“Reportedly, higher caste people, including the panchayat head, issued a diktat ordering Dalits not to use village water as they had complained that money meant for welfare schemes was being siphoned off by the panchayat members,” it added.

A week after the death of Nemichand Jain, the questions pile up casting a shadow over journalism in this conflict zone, says GEETA SESHU. Pix: Nemichand Jain (courtesy: Kamal Shukla)

Posted/Updated Wednesday, Feb 20 23:54:03, 2013

Mystery shrouds the death of Nemichand Jain, a journalist who was allegedly killed by Maoists on February 12, 2013, as they suspected him of being a police informer.

The killing again draws attention to the precarious nature of journalism practiced in rural areas, in conflict zones and in places where the media is unorganized.

Jain was stabbed to death at Leda village of Sukma district late Tuesday while he was returning from a local weekly market to his village Tongapal,” Lakhan Patel, a senior police official in Sukma, told a news agency. While Patel also said he couldn’t confirm whether Maoists or local rivals were behind the killing, police produced pamphlets thrown around the site of the killing that stated the ‘journalist’ was killed for being a police informer.

Jain was well known in the area and had made a name in rural reporting for the last 20 years, said Anil Mishra, Tehelka correspondent from Chhattisgarh. Like a number of journalists here, he was also a distributor of newspapers in his area. “He was a source of information about local issues that he would feed to journalists of the newspapers he distributed,” said Kamal Shukla, journalist and blogger from Kanker district. Jain used to write out short reports and send them to these newspapers, so in the complex information-gathering processes of rural reporting, he did perform a journalistic role, Shukla felt.

According to Mishra, there is still a lot of confusion over the perpetuators of the crime. At first, journalists of the area thought that the pamphlet announcing the Maoist involvement was a fake one! “For one, its colour was not the usual red colour and it was written in a different style, “ concurs Ruchir Garg, correspondent for NaiDuniya.

They point out that the day after the killing, another pamphlet issued ostensibly by the Kate Kalyan area committee, a part of the Darba divisional committee of the Maoists, denied their hand in the killing. Today, the Kanger Ghati area committee issued a pamphlet taking responsibility for the killing, terming Jain as a ‘mukhbari’ (a spy or informer).

The multiple pamphlets have aroused suspicion that the police have also have a hand in the killing, said senior journalist and President of the Chhattisgarh Union of Working Journalists, NRK Pillai. Bemoaning the manner in which the safety of journalists was continuously compromised in areas of conflict, Pillai said that he was not at all sure of the authenticity of the pamphlets.

Another factor was that Maoists had never, thus far, killed any journalists in the bloody war in Chhattisgarh, Mishra said. “There was no warning, or threats and his family also said he used to give news of Maoist statements and campaigns too, “ Mishra said.

Garg added that usually, Maoists do issue threats to journalists, maybe even issue an ultimatum to journalists to leave the area. And even then, the Maoists launch an intense campaign against the journalist before taking any action, he added.

Mishra demanded that police investigate reports that Jain had exposed the tin smugglers in the area and had a fight with the sons of a prominent tin smuggler only a few days before his death. The smuggling of tin and colombite, which villagers extract from rock in the area, is highly profitable and Jain had exposed this smuggling.

Shukla, however, is in no doubt that the Maoists had a hand in the killing of Nemichand Jain. According to his information, a week before the killing, a local group of Maoists held a jansabha and had kept in custody an innocent person from his village but Nemichand was instrumental freeing this person, angering them.

Nemichand was more of a local social activist than a journalist, Shukla said, and tried to mediate between villagers and the administration to resolve local issues like water supply or get the newspapers he distributed to write on these local issues.The allegation that he was a police informer was also not true, as Nemichand was known to have taken up cudgels against the police, said Shukla, quoting the local villagers.

In his blog, Shukla said that independent journalists of Bastar had actually done a service to the Maoists by highlighting their struggle and the police repression in the ‘undeclared war’ that has led to so much violence and killing in the area. Maoists didn’t take action against journalists who worked for tendu-leaf, mining and timber contractors, corporate houses and the administration, he complained.

Shukla, who was beaten up in 2012 when he tried to report on the large-scale felling of trees by a relative of the state’s forest minister, felt that journalists must boycott press statements from Maoists till they acknowledge their hand in the killings and punish the perpetuators!

For long, journalists in Chhattisgarh have been speaking out on the perils of reporting from the conflict zone. If they highlight local issues, the police target them as Maoists, said Pillai, who, along with Anil Mishra and Yeshwant Yadav, was at the receiving end of death threats in 2011, issued by the Adivasi Swabhimaan Manch, an organization allegedly sponsored by the police.

“In our areas, it is not uncommon for police to prey on weak journalists and lure them into providing information, “ says Pillai, adding that the arrangement may have gone sour. In fact, journalists are often targeted by the police for being ‘naxal’ informers, he added.

Earlier, journalists received innumerable threats from the Salwa Judum, the militia raised by local landlords with police support to fight the Maoists. In Bhopalapatnam, Afzal Khan and in Konta, Sanjay Reddy and Sheikh Anwar were the receiving of such police allegations. Sheikh Anwar, who was a senior and well-known journalist in the area, was still under arrest, Pillai said.

While journalists have demanded an inquiry into the killing and into the failure of the police to ensure the safety of journalists in the area, it is clear that incident has rattled the media in this already stressed and dangerous place. As Mishra put it, “Thus far, we thought there could be nothing worse than dealing with the police and their harassment, their threats and false cases. But if this news is true and the Maoists also start attacking us and killing us, where do we go and where can our journalism go?”

KOLKATA, 18 FEB: The country needs a “completely fresh approach” to health care Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said today, as an over-reliance on the private sector and lack of commitment from the state means it has gone “really, badly wrong”.

At a press conference this evening at the Taj Bengal hotel in Alipore to round off two days of discussions as part of his Kolkata Group workshop ~ an annual brainstorming session on pressing social issues for policymakers and activists ~ Mr Sen said the state needs to express a commitment to universal health care for all.

This could come in the form of legislation setting out a right to health, along the lines of the Right to Education Act, he said, although this wouldn’t in itself solve everything. “It alone will not cure the problem, and it will not become a perfect right to health just through the declaration. A number of ancillary things have to happen, including greater allocation of public funds to health care, which are woefully poor now.”

While other countries are moving to spend more resources on healt care, India is “totally stationary,” he said. “India is an outlier. I mean very little government commitment on expenditure and delivery.”

He said there is also “a very nasty and costly misunderstanding” that private health care can step in to bridge any health services gaps. There are also problems with relying on private medical insurance as a model, he said, pointing to difficulties that some people have been getting coverage if they have pre-existing conditions. “The reliance on private health care and the illusion that that can solve the problem is a major issue,” he said. “No country has been able to have a transition from bad health to good health on the basis of private healthcare.”

There are many good doctors working in the country, Mr Sen said. But he also expressed concern over “lack of professionalism in the medical community,” a problem he says needs to be tackled.

Mr Sen and his colleagues at the Kolkata Group also issued a declaration based on the debates they have had over the last couple of days. It not only called attention to the “abysmal state of health care” in the country, but also “the slow and very limited progress in women’s rights that includes a host of inequities, insecurities, and injustices.”The group in its declaration called upon the government to “recognise the recommendations of the Justice J S Verma Committee Report promoting women’s bodily integrity, dignity, and sexual autonomy.”

Bangalore – About 6 months after 15 youths were arrested from different locations in Karnataka on charges of a terror plot and alleged links with banned terror outfits, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) submitted a charge-sheet on Wednesday against 12 persons while dropping the charges of two others – journalist Muthi Ur Rehman Siddique and Yusuf Nalband.

On 29 August, 11 youths were picked up by CCB sleuths from Bangalore and Hubli for alleged links with banned terror outfits. Four more were subsequently arrested from different locations in Karnataka and Hyderabad.

The case of these 15 accused was registered at Basaveshwara Nagar police station, with the CCB Special Enquiries (SE) squad of Bangalore being in-charge of the investigation.

The NIA later took over the investigation of the case (384/2012) and continued inquiry against the accused persons after re-registering the case as RC 04/12/ NIA/Hyd.

According to the NIA, 25 persons are accused in the above case. Of the 25 accused, 15 have been arrested so far while 10 more are absconding.

Out of the 15 persons who were arrested, the NIA has filed charges against 11. The charges against two persons – journalist Muthi Ur Rehman Siddique and Yusuf Nalband – have been dropped while the NIA has sought more time to investigate two others, namely Aejaz Ahmed Mirza and Syed Tanzeem. One more person who is included in the charge-sheet, but remains absconding, is Zakir @ Ustad.

“The investigation disclosed the conspiracy to commit terrorist activities in India by a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) supported network of terrorists based abroad and their associates in India in the States of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra,” NIA said in a statement.

“Further Investigation of the Case is in progress against other accused who are absconding and suspected to be based in foreign countries as well as two arrested accused,” the statement further read.